Air Operations, CBI

3rd AVG Fighter Squadron P-40s destroy 3 Japanese army bombers, 2 transport planes and 11 fighters on the ground during an attack on an airfield near Moulmein, Burma at 0755 hours.

Air Operations, Europe

5 Wellingtons are dispatched to Essen but return because of the lack of cloud cover.

Air Operations, Pacific

The pictures show the end of a Japanese twin-engined bomber that attempted to attack a U.S. naval force in the Pacific. It is seen over a U.S. destroyer (1) shortly before it received a direct hit on its port engine, which broke off and fell into the sea

Japanese Attack on a US Naval Force

The Aircraft Immediately Went into a Steep Dive

It Crashes into the Ssea in Flames

The Crew of Three Perishes

On 18 March the U.S. Navy Department gave details of successes obtained by American and Australian airmen in operations against the Japanese forces invading New Guinea. These included the sinking of two heavy cruisers, damage to three light cruisers, five transports gutted by fire and beached as well as damage to other miscellaneous craft. In all twenty-three enemy ships were sunk or damaged for the loss of one Allied aircraft. On the 19th considerable Japanese forces in New Guinea were seen advancing across the island in a south-westerly direction, but attacks by U.S. bombers on Lae and on Rabaul, where a heavy cruiser was sunk, so interfered with the enemy's plans that he was obliged, at least temporarily, to call a halt. Tokio admitted that at Rabaul alone they had sustained 7,000 casualties.

Battle of the Atlantic

• The US tanker E. M. Clark (9647t) is torpedoed and sunk by U-124 about 22 miles southwest of Diamond Shoals, North Carolina. Survivors are rescued by the Venezuelan tanker Catatumbo and the US destroyer Dickerson (DD-157). U-124 then torpedoes the unarmed US tanker Papoose (3636t) about 15 miles south of Cape Lookout, North Carolina.
• The unarmed US tanker W. E. Hutton (7076t) is torpedoed and sunk by U-332 about 20 miles southeast of Cape Lookout, North Carolina with the loss of 13 of the ship's 36-man crew.

Britain, Home Front

Adm Louis Lord Mountbatten is appointed Chief of Combined Operations.

New Hebrides

American infantry and engineers arrive on Efate to build an airfield.

Forced Closure of Japanese American Enterprises

The forced closure of the Wanto family business, just one of thousands of Japanese American enterprises that were sold because of internment. Oakland, Calif., March 1942. A large sign reading "I am an American" placed in the window of a store, at 13th and Franklin streets, on December 8, the day after Pearl Harbor. The store was closed following orders to persons of Japanese descent to evacuate from certain West Coast areas. The owner, a University of California graduate, will be housed with hundreds of evacuees in War Relocation Authority centers for the duration of the war. On 18th March 1942 President Roosevelt signed an order establishing the War Relocation Authority. In February he had signed an order aimed at United States citizens of German, Italian and Japanese extraction. Tension was running high on the west coast of America, with a real fear of invasion. In practice it was the Japanese-American citizens who were most feared, and the War Relocation Authority was established to gather them up and place them in detention camps.